Tony Dawson — «The Smoker» :-)

Anthony Dawson was born in England on the one hundredth anniversary of the death of Beethoven. He studied at the Royal College of Music before joining the Army in 1945. Promotion came quickly, and by the time of his demobilization in 1948 he had risen from Private 4th Class to Private 3rd Class.

He emigrated to Canada in 1949, and taught at various private schools in Ontario, as well as playing the organ at a number of Anglican churches.

He has written for orchestra, for voices, for organ and for chamber ensembles. He is notable among 20th century composers in that his works have never caused riots in the concert halls in which they have been performed, nor has be ever received an unfavourable review in the press.

His Piano Concerto (1973), written for his own performance, is perhaps the only piano concerto in which the solo part is written entirely in half-notes and quarter-notes (though there are two pairs of eighth-notes in the cadenza to the last movement.) The 3rd clarinet parts of his orchestral works have received critical acclaim, while the 2nd violin part of his String Quartet was singled out for especial praise. He belongs to that admirable band of composers whose works are rarely performed.

He has done valuable work in the field of musicology, and he seems to be the first to have made a scientific study of the relationship between smoking and musical composition. His paper on "Some Aspects of the Influence of Smoking on the Compositional Process" was enthusiastically hailed at the Annual Meeting of the Tobacco Growers Association of America.

Dawson was the first to think of dividing composers into smoking and non-smoking groups. His Index of Comparative Achievement has been greeted as a major breakthrough in the field of musicology by the tobacco industry.